Town Destroyer

TOWN DESTROYER probes a passionate dispute over historic murals at a public high school depicting the life of George Washington: slaveowner, General, land speculator, President, and a man Seneca leaders called “town destroyer.” The controversy becomes a touchstone for a national debate over public art and historic memory in a time of racial reckoning.

George Washington's legacy is based on his role as one of the Founding Fathers and the first president of the United States. But for the Iroquois and tribal nations, he is known as the Town Destroyer (Hanodaga:yas). At San Francisco's George Washington High School, the Victor Arnautoff murals expose his harm to Native Americans and slaves, and has laid controversy to students and the community.

The San Francisco community in and around George Washington High School express their opinions about the Victor Arnautoff murals "Life of Washington" in front of the school board who are deciding their fate. The students and parents testify to the trauma of witnessing the works day in and day out while community members say why they are for or against removing art and history.

Whether it be a name or a monument, what harm can it bring? Jessica Young explains how the repeated experience of seeing something like "dead Indian" in Victor Anautoff's "Life in Washington" murals can traumatize while Pete Galindo shares how, even though he grew up with violence around him, a work of art depicting violence would instead validate and empower him.

Why is America secretly obsessed with Native Americans? Author Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche), who is the curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, walks through an exhibit featuring American icons like Elvis, Cher and Barbie and other recognizable pieces of American culture that appropriates Native American names and clothing or created an image of a "savage" Indian.